The Animated Body, Body Horror, and the Phenomena of Childhood Fears
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Vassar College Digital Window @ Vassar Senior Capstone Projects 2021 Squash and Stretch: The Animated Body, Body Horror, and the Phenomena of Childhood Fears Delaney Sears Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalwindow.vassar.edu/senior_capstone Recommended Citation Sears, Delaney, "Squash and Stretch: The Animated Body, Body Horror, and the Phenomena of Childhood Fears" (2021). Senior Capstone Projects. 1063. https://digitalwindow.vassar.edu/senior_capstone/1063 This Open Access is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Window @ Vassar. It has been accepted for inclusion in Senior Capstone Projects by an authorized administrator of Digital Window @ Vassar. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Squash and Stretch: The Animated Body, Body Horror, and the Phenomena of Childhood Fears Delaney Sears Vassar College 14 May 2021 A Senior Thesis in Media Studies Advisor: Justin Patch Sears 2 Table of Contents Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………………..………………………………...….3 Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………………………………..………4 Animation, Horror, and the Unspoken Overlap……………………………………………………………...…6 I. Childlike Expectations: Encoding and Decoding…………………………………………......11 II. Theory: Body Horror………………………………………………………………………………….…12 III. Theory: Uncanny Valley…………………………………………………………………...……………16 IV. Why It Matters: The Power in Bodies We Fear………………………………………………..19 Case Study I: Polar Express, Motion Capture, and the Uncanny…………………..……….…………...22 Case Study II: Pinocchio, Cel Animation, and Surreal Transformation………..…………………….31 Case Study III: Coraline, Chicken Run, and Stop-Motion Reanimation…………………..…………..40 Conclusion: Why Are We Afraid of Fear?.....................................................................................................51 References………………………………………………………………….………………………………..…………….…57 Sears 3 Acknowledgements This thesis would have been nearly impossible without so many of the people in my life; so thank you… To Justin Patch, without whom this thesis would have had no direction and no certainty, for knowing more about the horror genre than I probably ever will. To every professor of the Media Studies department who helped me find my passions and learn the beauty of this often confusing major: Giovanna Borradori, for your constant guidance, and Alexander Kupfer, for letting me talk about Disney and animation whenever possible, even in a class about sports. To the women of TA 46, past and present: through the highest highs and (very) lowest lows, you have shown me infinite compassion, grace, patience, and support through this thesis. Thank you for the laughs and the love and the TikToks, and I cannot wait to watch every single one of you change the world. I am in awe of you every day. To Natalie, the closest thing I’m sure I have to a soulmate. Thank you for talking about the most obscure horror movies with me at any moment, and for the patience of me telling you how movies work. To every other friend I’ve made at Vassar, and in Knoxville, especially those who worked with me in countless theater productions where I was probably a little too controlling: thank you for letting me be find my passion and creative power. And to Taylor Swift, because I wouldn’t have gotten this far without a song for every situation . .“motion capture put me in a bad light” is the alternate title for Case Study I. And to my family, to whom never enough thanks can be given. Connor and Aidan, thank you for being my goal for all of undergrad. So much of what I have done in the last four years was in an attempt to be as cool as you two. And Aidan, thanks for the title inspiration. I’ll give you credit. Mom and Dad, thank you for understanding that I wasn’t going to be a doctor and supporting me in these weird, specific passions of mine. Thank you for taking me to every animated movie under the sun, to Disney World, and for letting me watch horror movies in the living room even though you hate them. Your support and love have been more than I will ever be able to thank you for. Dad, you are a pillar of strength in my life. Mom, you are my best friend. I love you both and I would not be here without you. Sears 4 I. Introduction I don’t remember when I first saw Chicken Run; the movie came out in 2000, when I was only two years old, but I’m sure we owned it on VHS. What I do remember, however, is refusing to watch it for the approximately 15-18 years that followed. It became a running joke in my high school friend group – they would threaten me with making me watch Chicken Run if they wanted to get me to do something. I think I also cried in the theater watching Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Wererabbit (2005), created by the same stop-motion production company, Aardman Animations. I guess my parents thought second time would be the charm, but, like Chicken Run, I refused to watch it ever again after the initial viewing. And for the full sake of transparency, I have not re-watched it for this thesis yet. I will before I inevitably write that chapter, but I am putting it off for as long as I can out of pure fear. I also made my housemates promise they would watch it with me to hold me accountable. For the record, and to defend my own horror expertise, I am not easily scared – horror is my favorite genre, I find 80s slashers fun, and gore no longer has an effect on me. I willingly take in “scary” media, nearly constantly, yet I am still hesitant to watch Chicken Run. At the time of writing, I am twenty-two. As I was searching for a topic for this thesis, I realized that all of my classmates, family, and friends I talked to had a movie like that. A movie that, as a child, they were inexplicably terrified of and still refuse to watch as an adult. My housemate Zoë vehemently refuses to watch E.T.: the Extra Terrestrial, even to this day. My mom still tells stories about how my Sears 5 older brother, now a film buff himself, would cry whenever King Louie came on screen in The Jungle Book. Countless friends of mine would argue with me over whether The Polar Express was creepy or endearing – to the point of passionate arguments. My favorite horror podcast even did an entire episode about childhood filmic fears akin to horror movies.1 With a simple question – “What was the movie that terrified you as a child?” – I almost always got an immediate answer. Very few mentioned “traditional” horror movies, which are the typical answers for “What movie scares you now?” The movies that trigger many of childhood fears are not movies intended to be scary. The Polar Express and Chicken Run were not made specifically to frighten children; as explicitly children’s movies, they were produced with the intention to entertain, teach, or generally evoke positive emotions in the end – not lifelong terror. It was in these discussions that I saw an overlap of children’s media – specifically animation – and horror. And, as is so often relevant in cinema theory, the deep emotional reaction is rooted in the body – in this case, the animated body. When a child sees a body like theirs, in a movie actively made for them, transformed or negatively defaced in some way, it is unsettling. Horror theory, as rarely as it is associated with children’s media, can be used to analyze what makes these “non-scary” movies viscerally frightening – and animation as a medium is inherently a part of this indescribable fear. This thesis explores this oft-unexplored relationship between children’s media, animation, and horror theory, as well as how the medium of animation lends itself well to the concept of body horror, to illuminate some of the unexplored reasons behind childhood fears. 1 Dead Meat, “Childhood Fears (Dead Meat Podcast #49),” March 12, 2019, YouTube Video, 1:17:40, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s31nFNo_dQo&t=2423s. I highly recommend watching/listening for more examples of common childhood fear films! Sears 6 II. Animation, Horror, and the Unspoken Overlap Before analysis of certain styles or genres of film can occur, the medium itself of film must be understood; specifically, and most importantly, the concept of identification that is vital to the medium. Film as a medium has been around for well over a century now, and there is cognitive reasoning behind why it became such a strong player in both the media zeitgeist and in everyday life. Susan Buck-Morss describes the experience of sitting in a movie theater, surrounded by darkness and focused only on the filmic image in front, as a phenomenon of perception, explaining that “the surface of the cinema screen functions as an artificial organ of cognition.”2 The theater screen is an extension of the viewer; all senses are heightened, and reality is “bracketed out” to let the image on the screen become an extension of the self.3 Buck-Morss says that this becomes a shared experience of everyone in the theater, that “[t]he crowd in a movie theater not only experiences the masses. It has a ‘mass’ experience.”4 What is seen in the movie theater is shared, and this leads to a lot of the mass understanding that comes from decoding certain movies. But as much as watching a movie is a collective experience between every member of the theater’s audience, it is also a deeply personal one – because the film screen becomes practically a new appendage to the viewer, there is a deep emotional and visceral connection established. This leads to 2 Susan Buck-Morss, "The Cinema Screen as Prosthesis of Perception: A Historical Account," in The Senses Still: Perception and Memory as Material Culture in Modernity, ed.